AddWaiversTrades

Waivers and Trades

How does the Waivers process work?

In order to provide an equal opportunity for all owners to add players to their roster that are new to the free agent pool, a Waiver process can be implemented. Owners' requests to add players on waivers to their roster are not executed immediately, but are put in a pending status for a least 24 hours. This allows multiple teams to request the same players. Most nights between midnight and 6AM ET a Waiver Process will be run, executing the pending requests in Waiver Rank order (so, for example, if waivers runs in your league on Tuesdays, it will run late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning). If you play in a non-commissioner league, waivers will run every night. If you play in a commissioner league, your commissioner can select which nights waivers will run. Check League Home, Rules to see which nights it does run in your league.

When a transaction is made during the Waiver Process, the team's rank is set to last and everyone else's rank moves up one (check the League Home, Rules page to see if your league's waiver ranks are reset every week.) All transactions during the waiver process are effective for the next scoring period.

Conditions for Waivers

NFL players are placed on waivers under the following circumstances:

A player is released during a waiver process: A player released during a waiver process is on waivers until the next waiver process. Example: An owner requests Player A on waivers and drops Player B. This request is pending until the waiver process runs. During the waiver process, the owner is awarded Player A, and Player B is released from the roster and placed on waivers until the next waiver process.

A player is released during a free agent acquisition: Requests for players not on waivers are executed immediately. However, the player dropped in a non-waivers transaction is placed on waivers for at least 24 hours. If a waiver process runs prior to 24 hours the player will remain on waivers until the following waivers process. Example: An owner drops a player on Wednesday afternoon in order to pick up a free agent. The player dropped remains on waivers until Thursday night's waiver process.

Waiver Rank

During a waiver process, pending transactions are processed in an order determined by each team's waiver rank. The team with the highest waiver rank will get its first requested player. If that team's highest pending transaction can't be executed because another team has the requested player, the transaction gets deleted and the team's next transaction, if one exists, is then executed. When a team gets a requested player, the team's waiver rank is dropped to the end and every other team moves up one and the process is continued. If a team doesn't have any pending transactions because all players requested were taken by other teams, or the owner simply didn't request any players, the team's turn is skipped but the waiver rank is not dropped. If a team has the highest waiver rank after Monday night and doesn't request any players for Tuesday night's waiver process, that team will still have the highest rank for the next process. The waiver rank for all teams at the end of one waiver process will be the starting rank for the next process. Check the League Home, Rules page, or ask your league's commissioner, if your league's waiver ranks are reset every week based on reverse order of the standings.

Preseason Waivers and Initial Waiver Rank

For Football Commissioner leagues, the first waivers process will run sometime on or after June 1, 2007 as determined by your commissioner. Check with your commissioner for the exact date. The default waiver rank order will be the reverse of the draft order. Even if your league doesn't draft on-line the waiver order can be set by the commissioner of your league on this page.

CBS Sports.com Fantasy Football does support a preseason waivers process. For Fantasy Football game players, the first waiver process will be run the second night after your draft, time permitting, and the initial waiver rank will be based on reverse draft order.

Waivers Period

The waivers period is the length of time a player is on waivers before a claim will be processed and the player will be added to a roster. Check the League Home, Rules page to see how long dropped players remain on waivers in your league (1, 2 or 3 days).

Making a Waivers Claim

If you want to drop a player and pick up a player off of waivers follow these steps:

Lets say you have a player that you want to drop (player A) and several players that you would like to add (players B and C), depending on their availability when your turn comes up. If player B is not available you would like to pick up player C. In order to accomplish this you would submit two Add/Drop requests:

Drop player A, Add player B, and

Drop player A, Add player C.

Lets say your turn comes up and player B has already been picked up off waivers by another team. A request cannot be executed if either the add or drop player is not available. Requests will be skipped until the first valid roster move is found. In this case, your second request would be executed and you would get player C (provided he is not also already picked up off waivers).

The same is true in the reverse. If you dropped player A and added player B, then during your next round of waiver selections it will skip over the second waiver request involving Player A and go down your list to see if you have any other waiver requests.

Any waivers request that would cause your roster to exceed the maximum players allowed will be skipped.

Note: Free agents are available on a first-come, first-served basis; they can be picked up at any time. If a player is dropped from a roster and he clears the waiver process without being picked up, he then becomes a free agent, and can be picked up at any time, without having to go through a waivers process.

For Commissioner Leagues:

All players go on waivers after the lineup locks each week. Once the initial waiver process runs, all players are free agents until a half-hour before the first game on Sunday. However, if there are Thursday or Saturday games, the players involved in those games will be placed on Waivers five minutes prior to the start of their game and will not be eligible to be added to a team's roster until the first Waivers process of the following week runs.

For single-player leagues:

The waiver process will run for the first time each week between midnight Tuesday/Wednesday and 6:00:00 AM Wednesday which is approximately 24 hours after the completion of Monday night's game. In a typical week where there are not any Thursday or Saturday games, the waiver process will run every night through Saturday night (the last process will be early Sunday morning).

Please remember that all commissioner leagues must go to Add/drop page, scroll to the bottom and "start waivers" after you have completed the draft.

Why wont my waivers run? Answer

In our commisioner leagues, we offer a waivers system for picking up players after your draft. The way this works is at the start of the week all players are on waivers. You can choose to run waivers any day from Tuesday to Saturday. When you select to run them on Tuesday they technically run on Wednesday morning around 2 am EST. Along with setting what days you would like to run waivers, you have to set how long you want your waiver period to be, defining how long you want players to be on waivers before they are available to be claimed off of waivers.

The finer details of the waiver process have led to some misconceptions, among them: Many owners think that once the waiver period is over the players become free agents. This is not correct. The defined time refers to how long until they can be claimed off of waivers.

The only way a player can become a free agent if they are available to be claimed off waivers and there is a waiver run where they are not claimed by any team. Then they will become a free agent and can be added first come, first served basis.

Another common misunderstanding is when a player's waiver period actually begins. If a player is dropped in the Tuesday night/Wednesday morning waiver run they will not be available until the Thursday night/Friday morning waiver run.

There is no way to claim a player off waivers the night after he was dropped because the waiver period for that player has to be a full day.

Because the Tuesday night run actually takes place after midnight, it is considered Wednesday. Then the waiver period will be Thursday and they will be available by the time Thursday night/Friday morning waiver run takes place. To get the most out of waivers, we find the best solution is a one day waiver period, and choose to run waivers Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, allowing the maximum amount of waivers in a week.

We allow you to run waivers every day, but that wont actually run two days in a row for a player.

Trade Process

Use My Team, Trade to offer trades to other owners or to evaluate, accept and reject trades offered to you.

To propose a trade, select the player(s) from your team (listed on the left) by clicking on the player you want to offer in a trade. To select multiple players, hold down the CTRL key while clicking once on each player you want to offer. Then choose the team you'd like to trade with, in the listbox on the right. Select the players on that team exactly as described above. You can enter text in the Comment field, for the other owner to read when he/she views the offer.

Click Offer Trade and your trade offer will automatically be e-mailed to the other owner. That owner will also see your offer displayed in a yellow alert box on his/her League Home page.

Click Evaluate Trade to see a statistical comparison of the players you've selected.

Once you've made or received a trade offer, all of your pending trade offers will be listed at the top of this page. Next to each offer you've made to another team, you'll see a Withdraw link, which you can click to take back your offer. Next to each offer you've received from other teams, you'll see a Trade Review link, which you can click to accept, reject or evaluate the trade.

Once a trade offer is accepted, both teams' rosters will be automatically updated, and the trade will be reflected on the Transactions, Report page, unless your league uses a Trade Voting process. If you drop a player after offering him in a trade, that trade will be considered withdrawn. If you drop a player who has been requested in a trade proposed to you, that trade will be considered rejected.

Once your league's lineup deadline has passed for the week, owners will not be able to accept trades until the next lineup period begins. They will, however, still be able to evaluate or reject trades.